Roger B. Fillingim, PhD

Training and Employment

Roger B. Fillingim, PhD, earned his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in pain research at the University of North Carolina. From 1996-2000 he was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and in 2000 he moved to the University of Florida as an Associate Professor in the College of Dentistry. Currently, Dr. Fillingim is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida, College of Dentistry and the Director of the University of Florida Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence (PRICE). Dr. Fillingim also currently serves as the Immediate Past President of the American Pain Society.

Honors and Awards

Dr. Fillingim has received several awards, including a University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship, and the 2009 Wilbert E. Fordyce Clinical Investigator Award from the American Pain Society.

Research Interests

The Institute of Medicine recently reported that chronic pain affects 100 million people in the United States and produces annual costs up to $635 billion, making pain arguably the most prevalent and costly health condition affecting this country. My research program endeavors to identify the mechanisms and clinical implications of individual differences in pain responses. Our studies typically employ quantitative sensory testing to investigate the functioning of the pain processing system. For the past several years, our research group has exploited laboratory measures of pain sensitivity and endogenous pain modulation to elucidate individual differences in pain and analgesic responses. Specifically, we are interested in the influence of sex/gender, race/ethnic group, age, and genetic factors on pain and analgesic responses and the mechanisms underlying these individual differences in pain. Also, we are investigating pain sensitivity, psychosocial variables, and genetics as potential risk factors for development of chronic pain conditions. We are one of the sites for the Orofacial Pain: Prospective Evaluation and Risk Assessment (OPPERA) Study, a large multi-center prospective cohort study designed to identify risk factors for the onset and maintenance of painful temporomandibular disorders (TMD).